Ministry of Women and Child Development
Empowerment of Women
The Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing various schemes for empowerment of women across the country. The details of major schemes are:
- Mahila Shakti Kendra scheme empowers rural women through community participation by involvement of Student Volunteers. The scheme is envisaged to work at various levels and at the national and state level technical support to the respective government on issues related to women is provided.
- Swadhar Greh scheme targets the women victims of unfortunate circumstances who are in need of institutional support for rehabilitation so that they could lead their life with dignity.
- Ujjawala is a comprehensive scheme to combat trafficking with the objective to prevent trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation, to facilitate rescue victims and placing them in safe custody, to provide rehabilitation services by providing basic amenities/needs, to facilitate reintegration of victims into the family and society, to facilitate repatriation of cross border victims.
- Working Women Hostel aims at providing safe and affordable accommodation to working women. These hostels have Day care facility for the children of inmates too. The Ministry provides financial support for establishing such hostels by NGOs or State Governments.
- Beti Bachao Beti Padhao  scheme is a tri-ministerial initiative of Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health & Family Welfare and Human Resource Development with a focus on awareness and advocacy campaign for changing mindsets, multi-sectoral action in select districts, enabling girls' education and effective enforcement of Pre-Conception & Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques  Act. The specific objectives of the scheme include preventing gender biased sex selective elimination; ensuring survival and protection of the girl child and ensuring education and participation of the girl child.
- One Stop Centre  facilitates access to an integrated range of services including police, medical, legal, psychological support and temporary shelter to women affected by violence. The Scheme is funded through Nirbhaya Fund.
vii. Women Helpline – The Scheme is being implemented since 1st April, 2015 to provide 24 hours emergency and non-emergency response to women affected by violence through referral and information about women related government schemes/programmes across the country through a single uniform number .
viii. Mahila Police Volunteers  Scheme is implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs. It envisages engagement of Mahila Police Volunteers in States/UTs who act as a link between police and community and facilitates women in distress.
Some of the other initiatives taken for women empowerment by the Ministry of Women and Child Development are as under:
1. The Ministry has advised the States/UTs to increase the representation of women in the police force. 17 States/UTs have extended 33% or more reservation for women in police forces.
2. Capacity Building of Elected Women Representatives  to empower women to participate effectively in the governance processes was taken up during 2017-18 and 2018-19.33,332 EWRs were trained across the country.
This information was given by the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.